Wednesday, May 01, 2013

On April 30, 2013, The Armenian Poetry Project turned7. This one was a quiet celebration. With hundreds of daily visitors and over 1900 entries, we are by no means resting on our laurels. I believe APP helped me achieve several goals: bringing Armenian poetry to an international audience; access to the masses, including those who don't have Armenian books in their homes and public libraries; encouraging readers to discover new writers, while providing forgotten poems and their authors a new readership.If you have noticed that the number of entries has slowed down recently, it is because we are coming up with new ideas and projects:1 - Resources for groups who want to start their own DEAD ARMENIAN POETS SOCIETY. This was the core of what eventually became APP. I will be writing some guidelines on how to run evenings dedicated to readings of works by late Armenian authors.2. As a way of archiving, I will be copying our audio files to SoundCloud. The new group has already been created and episodes will be uploaded in the future. This will help APP reach a larger audience as the blog format restricts us for posting them all in the same page, and iTunes cannot archive old episodes.The APP group on SoundCloud will be here.3. Resources for Armenian poetry workshops.4. Support for cultural events and help in finding authors for reading series in the United States and Canada.5. Support for the annual poetry competition, which for the last three years has been sponsored by the ASA.6. Regular postings -- albeit not daily -- of poems, translations and announcements. I invite all readers to stay in touch, add comments and share your thoughts.All best, and thank you for being a reader and supporter of the APP.Lola KoundakjianCurator and Director, The Armenian Poetry Project